October 29th

I’ve finished entering the plot of Broken Trails into Scrivener, and have realized I’m not as close to completion as I’d hoped. Instead of a couple more scenes to write, I’ve now got seven… and an additional four that can be swapped to Scotch’s POV rather than Lainey’s in order to even it out a bit.

This program is really Da Bomb! By editing the labels for each scene, I can color code the corkboard view to show which scenes are concept (the race,) or specifically Lainey’s or Scotch’s POV. There was a definite dearth of Scotch throughout the race itself, so I’ve done what I can to change that (hence the four changing POV scenes.) Overseeing the entire manuscript as a set of index cards has been quite helpful on other books, too. I’m glad I invested in the program!

Not much else going on. Cool and rainy in these parts. Picked up my wife’s Yule gift yesterday (she’ll love it!) I think I’ll spend the rest of the afternoon plugging my Iditarod research into the Broken Trails project.

5 Comments

Jen
on Nov 2, 2009 at 19:46

I discovered Scrivener as well a year ago. I bought it, installed in on my trusty Mac, and have had some fun with it. Glad you discovered it too.

Hi…about Scrivener: I’m getting very close (within 50 pages) to finishing a book, and I’m wondering if there’s any benefit in using Scrivener after the fact, as it were…to make sure everything flows, to ensure I’ve got my POVs in order, etc. I’ve been a complete seat of the pants writer on this piece, and although I’ve enjoyed it, writing that way can be dangerous for one’s sanity, not to mention the danger to the well-being of the horses one changes midstream. By the way, I found my way here after reading Blayne Cooper’s book Stranded, went to her website and found you on her list of links. Thanks.

I’d go for it as far as plugging your manuscript into the program. I finished the Iditarod piece in 2005, and revamped it with some character twists over the last year or so. As I’ve stated in my blog, I THOUGHT I was almost finished. Then I created a Scrivener project for it, and discovered a whole mess of things I hadn’t taken into consideration.

The program is written by writers, both fiction and screen writing, and I haven’t found anything to complain about. I think this is the third or fourth time I’ve picked up a writing program. I’ve never been this excited about it. Even though my first Sanguire novel is complete, I think I’ll plug it in just to see how it can be improved before I send it to the next publisher.

Thanks for the info, Jordan, I’m going to get the program. I believe they make a version for the iMac. I think it would be a good idea because over the weekend I wrote an entire two-page scene, and left out the main character, who was essential to the scene! It’s that “I’m-almost-done-I-think” syndrome where the excitement of nearing the finish line obliterates all semblance of common sense and has been known to cause weight gain—because you have to celebrate the almost The End, don’t you? 😉

Yes I agree about Blayne—just finishing Stranded, and I love it when an author makes me laugh out loud. Oh yeah, and her characters are hot!